Before and After Blog Hop

I know it looks like all I'm doing is participating in meme's this week. That's because I'm really not at liberty to discuss my actual week until later tonight. Then I can share with you all what's really been going on with our family instead of just showing you a picture a day of stuff I shot last week :) Don't get too excited, though, this week has not been fun at all!

Anyway, on to Thursday's "Before and After Blog Hop". I just love reading Monica's Pixel Perfect blog. I love her tutorials. I love hearing about her every day life with her family. Go check her blog out and you will not be disappointed!

So, here is my shot, straight out of the camera (SOOC). Ugh.  The first thing you are drawn to is the gaudy florescent stuffed caterpillar wearing sunglasses, no less.  You totally miss Jaina's cute freckles and smile! So, first I cropped out the caterpillar. Sorry dude!

Then I played with the lighting on Jaina's face. I added some fill light and high lights in Picasa. I know I can do this in GIMP, but I just like how it looks better in Picasa. Then I decided the mix of colors was way too distracting, so I chose to edit this in black and white with a blue filter. Then I sharpened the image just a bit to bring out Jaina's freckles more.

Then I tried to open the file (only 1.1 MB because of cropping) in Picnik to add a little vignette, but it was not uploading my picture at all. I always have trouble with Picnik being incredibly slow on my computer. I am not sure they like my Firefox browser.

I finally had to open the resized SOOC shot and then try to recreate what my Picasa edit looked like. It was very similar, thank goodness.

Then I decided to open the original file in GIMP and play with textures :)

Not crazy about the texture I used. I think it adds lines more than grain. Oh well, gotta keep trying! :)